Thread: Any doubts about Climate Change?

Originally Posted by Takeovers

There were two reasons. One was a staggering amount of waste. The other was that the DDR had a large chemical industry, very energy consuming, again energy produced and consumed at staggering inefficiency.

The smoke I talked about was not primarily waste, it was lack of environmental conciousness. Poor quality sulphur rich coal burned everywhere, no filters whatsoever, problems rectified in the west decades earlier.

The DDR remit was clear and followed Soviet doctrine. Make stuff as cheaply as possible to earn currency for the Union.
Absolutely no need to concern yourselves about health and safety, low wages, pollution etc, just make cheap stuff inexpensively, and sell it to the west.
The only exception that I can recall is Carl Zeiss Jena optics. Obviously a high quality product they inherited and backed the brand quite shamelessly.

Global energy experts released grim findings Monday, saying that not only are planet-warming carbon-dioxide emissions still increasing, but the world's growing thirst for energy has led to higher emissions from coal-fired power plants than ever before.

Energy demand around the world grew by 2.3 percent over the past year, marking the most rapid increase in a decade, according to the report from the International Energy Agency. To meet that demand, largely fueled by a booming economy, countries turned to an array of sources, including renewables.
But nothing filled the void quite like fossil fuels, which satisfied nearly 70 percent of the skyrocketing electricity demand, according to the agency, which analyzes energy trends on behalf of 30 member countries, including the United States.
In particular, a fleet of relatively young coal plants located in Asia, with decades to go on their lifetimes, led the way toward a record for emissions from coal fired power plants - exceeding 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide "for the first time," the agency said.
In Asia, "average plants are only 12 years old, decades younger than their average economic lifetime of around 40 years," the agency found.
As a result, greenhouse-gas emissions from the use of energy - by far their largest source - surged in 2018, reaching an record high of 33.1 billion tons.
Emissions showed 1.7 percent growth, well above the average since 2010. The growth in global emissions in 2018 alone was "equivalent to the total emissions from international aviation," the body found.

https://www.sciencealert.com/coal-plants-are-emitting-more-than-ever-and-we-are-headed-for-disaster

Originally Posted by Switch

The DDR remit was clear and followed Soviet doctrine. Make stuff as cheaply as possible to earn currency for the Union.

Any link?


HOW MUCH DOES CANADA GIVE OUT IN FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES?

About $3.3 billion for oil and gas producers (currency in Canadian dollars).
$3.3 billion is obviously a lot of money. Let’s put it in perspective.



Most Canadians currently live in a province with some kind of price on carbon pollution, whether it’s in place or under development. The plan is to make that national. Much like Canada’s past success in stopping acid rain, putting a price on carbon pollution is a key part of the global fight against climate change.

https://www.iisd.org/faq/unpacking-c...uel-subsidies/

Why is Canada far behind other countries in switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources?
Published on May 20, 2018



Why is Canada far behind other countries in switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources? ? TheIndependent.ca

Canada's most shameful environmental secret must not remain hidden

Tar sands have been dubbed the largest – and most destructive – industrial project in human history. And Canada is on the forefront of their exploitation



‘Tar sands have been dubbed the largest (and most destructive) industrial project in human history.’ Photograph: Aaron Huey/National Geographic/Getty Images



‘These ponds hold 1 trillion litres of sludge that is unlike any other industrial by-product in the world.’

These open, unlined ponds currently cover 220 sq km, an area of land equivalent to 73 New York Central Parks

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...tailings-ponds

Originally Posted by Klondyke

Any link?

No link, because I actually lived through it, and personally witnessed the damage caused, and the aftermath.

In 2004 I took a train from Northern Europe to Brno in the south of the Czech Republic. The changing landscape tells its own story. All you need is the ability to read a landscape. Not difficult.

^ As a matter of fact, I know about that area one or two things either. However, I cannot agree with such a vague statement:

The DDR remit was clear and followed Soviet doctrine. Make stuff as cheaply as possible to earn currency for the Union.

Aren't you aware of the fact, where - after 30 years of "liberation" - the cheap stuff and a big portion of "currency" of most former Soviet republics - is directed to?

Originally Posted by Klondyke

^ As a matter of fact, I know about that area one or two things either. However, I cannot agree with such a vague statement:


Aren't you aware of the fact, where - after 30 years of "liberation" - the cheap stuff and a big portion of "currency" of most former Soviet republics - is directed to?

My statement was as clear as the Soviet remit issued to the DDR and other Warsaw Pact states.

Your quoted post seems to consist of alphabet soup. I'm sure you know what you mean, but I don't.

Originally Posted by Switch

My statement was as clear as the Soviet remit issued to the DDR and other Warsaw Pact states.

Your quoted post seems to consist of alphabet soup. I'm sure you know what you mean, but I don't.

I gave up trying to understand that gibberish a long time ago.

^Somebody might have a gibberish English, somebody does have a gibberish mind - even with his "Queen's English"

The worst effects of global warming are still to come, but some have certainly arrived and are getting stronger each year. Over the 25 years the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has produced its annual State of the Global Climate reports, things have got noticeably worse.


“Since the Statement was first published, climate science has achieved an unprecedented degree of robustness, providing authoritative evidence of global temperature increase and associated features,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a media statement.

Although most of the key findings of the newly released 2018 Statement were already known to anyone paying attention, it is very obvious that group does not include most of the people with the greatest power to slow the damage.

The Statement notes each of the last four years has been hotter than any year beforehand. The only reason 2018 air temperatures did not match the peak 2016 was that there was no El Niño effect last year. When that returns, further records are almost inevitable. Meanwhile, the 2018 average temperature of the top 700 meters (2,300 feet) of the oceans was the highest since 1955 when widespread monitoring began.

In addition, sea levels were 3.7 millimeters (0.15 inches) higher than in 2017, accelerating the average 3.1mm rise from 1993-2017. The oceans continued to become less alkaline, impairing the capacity of corals to recover from damage or establish new reefs. Arctic sea ice started the year with near record lows, but recovered fractionally to be the sixth lowest on record when the September minimum came around.

Antarctic sea ice, the decline of which has been less noticeable than its northern counterpart, was also one of the lowest ever recorded.

Final results are not in for global glacier movements, but a sample analyzed saw an overall loss of ice mass for the 31st year in a row.

The social impact of all this is enormous. Heatwaves are longer and 125 million more people experience them today than at the start of this century. By September 2018, 2 million people – more than 10 percent of all internally displaced persons – had been forced to leave their homes by floods or drought. World hunger, which declined for decades thanks to improved agriculture and food transportation has stabilized, and may even have started rising again.

With major flooding events occurring right now on three continents, 2019 is certainly offering no relief. Taalas used the opportunity to highlight the worst of these disasters. “[Cyclone] Idai made landfall over the city of Beira: a rapidly growing, low-lying city on a coastline vulnerable to storm surges and already facing the consequences of sea level rise. Idai’s victims personify why we need the global agenda on sustainable development, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction,” he said. The UN believes Cyclone Idai may be the Southern Hemisphere's worst natural disaster ever.

https://www.iflscience.com/environment/global-impacts-of-climate-change-are-accelerating-uns-annual-report-reveals/

The number of new corals on Australia's Great Barrier Reef has plunged by 89% since unprecedented bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, scientists say.


The events, which damaged two-thirds of the world's largest reef system, are now being blamed for triggering a collapse in coral re-growth last year.

"Dead corals don't make babies," said lead author Prof Terry Hughes, from Queensland's James Cook University.

The scientists blame the problem on rising sea temperatures.

The research, published in journal Nature on Thursday, was carried out by a group of scientists last year.

It measured how many adult corals along the reef had survived following the mass bleaching events, and the number of new corals that had been produced.


"Across the length of the Great Barrier Reef, there was an average 90% decline from historical [1990s] levels of recruitment," co-author Prof Andrew Baird told the BBC.

The study highlights the link between coral vulnerability and rising sea temperatures resulting from sustained global warming, and recommends increased international action to reduce carbon emissions.

Coral bleaching is caused by rising temperatures and occurs when corals under stress drive out the algae - known as zooxanthellae - that give them colour. If normal conditions return, the corals can recover. But it can take decades, and if the stress continues the corals can die.
'Nothing left to replenish the reef'

Prof Baird said the "pretty extraordinary" decline was unexpected. It was most likely the reef's first re-growth problem on a mass scale, he added.


"Babies can travel over vast distances, and if one reef is knocked out, there are usually plenty of adults in another reef to provide juveniles," Prof Baird said.

However, the bleaching in 2016 and 2017 affected a 1,500km (900 miles) stretch of the reef.

"Now, the scale of mortality is such that there's nothing left to replenish the reef," Prof Baird said.

The study also found that the mix of baby coral species had changed. It found a 93% drop in Acropora, a species which typically dominates a healthy reef and provides habitats for thousands of other species.The researchers said coral replenishment could recover over the next five to 10 years if there were no future bleaching events.

However, given current estimates, this likelihood was "almost inconceivable", said Prof Baird.

"We've gotten to the point now where local solutions for the reef are almost pointless - the only thing that matters is action on climate change," Prof Baird said.

The reef - a vast collection of thousands of smaller coral reefs stretching from the northern tip of Queensland to the state's southern city of Bundaberg - was given World Heritage status in 1981.

The UN says it is the "most biodiverse" of all the World Heritage sites, and of "enormous scientific and intrinsic importance".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-47809500

The documentary discussed here can be downloaded at:

https://thepiratebay10.org/torrent/3..._x264_AAC_HDTV

Once, a night in with David Attenborough promised the TV equivalent of a warm blanket. It was a chance to watch spectacular creatures revelling in the beauty of their natural habitats, as the man with a voice as soothing as ice-cream described what we could see, from the violent to the serene. Those days are gone. Attenborough’s recent move to Netflix, for Our Planet, was deceptive: a seemingly gorgeous nature documentary that doubled up as animal kingdom snuff movies in which the beauty of those natural habitats was revealed as a crumbling paradise, ruined by people and particularly by greed. One of the main points of praise for Our Planet, which was well received, suggested that Attenborough was no longer tiptoeing around the issue of climate change, the implication being that he had done so before.

You sense that Our Planet was unfortunately timed for the BBC. In Climate Change: The Facts, the gloves are now not so much off as thrown to the floor in a certain rage. It’s right there in the title, bold and stark. This hour-long documentary, part of the Our Planet Matters season, is wide-ranging yet concise, easy to understand, not blighted by the ego of, say, An Inconvenient Truth, and it is designed to do for climate change denial what 2017’s Blue Planet did for single-use plastic.

That’s not to say it should be Attenborough’s responsibility to get the wider public to pay attention, nor that it is down to the BBC. It isn’t. But Climate Change: The Facts is a rousing call to arms. It is an alarm clock set at a horrifying volume. The first 40 minutes are given over to what Attenborough calls, without hyperbole, “our greatest threat in thousands of years”. Expert after expert explains the consequences of rising CO2 levels, on the ice caps, on coastal regions, on weather and wildlife and society itself. The most powerful moments are in footage shot not by expert crews who have spent years on location, but on shaky cameras, capturing the very moment at which the reality of our warming planet struck the person holding the phone. In Cairns, Australia, flying foxes are unable to survive the extreme temperatures; rescuers survey the terrible massacre, and we learn that while 350 were saved, 11,000 died. A man and his son talk through their escape from raging wildfires, over the film they took while attempting to drive through a cavern of blazing red trees. These are horror movies playing out in miniature. It is difficult to watch even five minutes of this and remain somehow neutral, or unconvinced.

Yet as I kept on, scribbling down an increasingly grim list of statistics, most of which I knew, vaguely, though compiled like this they finally sound as dreadful as they truly are – 20 of the warmest years on record happened in the last 22 years; Greenland’s ice sheet is melting five times faster than it was 25 years ago – I started to wonder about responsibility, and if and where it would be placed. This would be a toothless film, in the end, if it were hamstrung by political neutrality, and if its inevitable “it’s not too late” message rested solely on individuals and what relatively little tweaks we might make as consumers. What about corporations? What about governments?

Then, at that exact moment, having played the despair through to its crescendo, the experts served up unvarnished honesty. They lined up to lay out the facts, plain and simple. Fossil fuel companies are the most profitable businesses man has ever known, and they engage in PR offensives, using the same consultants as tobacco companies, and the resulting uncertainty and denial, designed to safeguard profits, has narrowed our window for action. It is unforgivable. I find it hard to believe that anyone, regardless of political affiliation, can watch footage of Trump calling climate change “a hoax ... a money-making industry” and not be left winded by such staggering ignorance or astonishing deceit, though it is, more likely, more bleakly, a catastrophic combination of the two. At least Nigel Lawson only appears here in archive footage, and his argument sounds limp, to put it kindly.

Climate Change: The Facts should not have to change minds, but perhaps it will change them anyway, or at least make this seem as pressing as it needs to be. With the Extinction Rebellion protests across London this week, disrupting day-to-day business, and this, on primetime BBC One, maybe the message will filter through. At the very least, it should incite indignation that more was not done, sooner, and then urgency and a decision to both change and push for change at a much higher level. Because there is, for a brief moment, just possibly, still time.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...d-attenborough

Attenborough’s tragedy porn of walruses plunging to their deaths because of climate change is contrived nonsense

A recent Netflix ‘Our Planet’ program with David Attenborough delivering a disturbing message of doom about walruses falling off a cliff to their deaths because of climate change is contrived nonsense on par with the bogus National Geographic starving polar bear video of 2017. The walruses shown in this Netflix film were almost certainly driven over the cliff by polar bears during a well-publicized incident in 2017, not because they were “confused by a combination of shrinking ice cover and their own poor eyesight“.


Falling off cliffs is not a new phenomenon. Here is video of US Fish and Wildlife officials in 1994 trying to explain a situation where walruses are falling even without the impetus from polar bears, at Cape Pierce in the southern Bering Sea (a haulout for adult males during the ice-free season). Explanation? Overcrowding (too many walruses).


https://polarbearscience.com/2019/04...ived-nonsense/










'Our Planet' film crew is still lying about walrus cliff deaths: here’s how we know


The lie being told by Attenborough and the film crew is that 200-300 walruses fell during the time they were filming, while in fact they filmed only a few: polar bears were responsible for the majority of the carcasses shown on the beach below the cliff.


https://polarbearscience.com/2019/04...s-how-we-know/

^ Another pusher of junk science. The person that operates that site is a paid shill by none other then the Heartland institute. You get a red for pushing junk science.

Susan Crockford

Credentials

• Doctorate from the University of Victoria in 2004. [1]
• Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology from the University of B.C. (1976). [1]

Background

Susan Crockford runs the website “Polar Bear Science” where she describes herself as a “zoologist with more than 35 years experience, including published work on the Holocene history of Arctic animals.” She also runs the private consulting company, Pacific Identifications Inc. [2]

“Polar bear evolution is one of my professional interests,” Crockford writes at Polar Bear Science. While she does not study them in the field, she claims she is a “different kind of polar bear expert” and that “having a different background means I know things they do not and this makes my contribution valuable and valid.” [2]

Crockford, who has also said that “‘polar bear expert’ describes me just as well as ‘dog evolution expert,’” has not published in any peer-reviewed journals on polar bears. Crockford consistently claims that her work shows polar bears are not being endangered by global warming. A search of Google Scholar returns a number of articles related to early dog domestication. However, Crockford has prolifically posted polar bear articles on her own blog and in regular reports at the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which are often echoed by an extensive network of climate change denial blogs, conservative news sources like Breitbart, and climate change denial think tanks and organizations. [3], [4]

Crockford has claimed her GWPF reports are peer reviewed. However, an undercover Greenpeace investigation cast doubt on the validity of the GWPF's internal review process, noting that only the group's internal advisory council generally reviewed documents, rather than the genuine, rigorous and often anonymized peer review of a traditional scientific journal. [10]

In 2012, a confidential document leak, dubbed Denialgate, revealed that Crockford had also been receiving payments of $750 per month from the notorious climate change denial think tank, the Heartland Institute, to work on their NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change) project. Crockford has also spoken at the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC). Crockford refused to discuss the payments when contacted by a University of Victoria student newspaper. [5], [35]

Crockford regularly produces studies for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a think tank based in the UK run by Nigel Lawson with the purpose of combating what the foundation describes as “extremely damaging and harmful policies” designed to mitigate climate change. [6]

In November 2017, a study in the journal BioScience of discussions about polar bears on climate science denial blogs found that Crockford's website was cited in about 80 percent of all the posts analyzed.

“Zero Authority” on Polar Bear Science

Ian Stirling, who has spent more than four decades studying polar bears and publishing over 150 papers and five books on the topic, says Crockford has “zero” authority on the subject. [2], [7]

“If you tell a lie big enough, often enough, people will begin to believe it,” said Ian Stirling. “The denier websites have been using her and building her up as an expert.” [7]

Sterling co-authored a 2017 paper in the journal BioScience looking at a tactic used by climate change denial blogs to attack the symbols of climate change, rather than the science behind it. Motherboard reported that the study also found that, by examining 45 blogs that deny or question climate science, 80
percent of those blogs referenced a single site with reference to polar bears: that of Susan Crockford. [8]

“Because this evidence is so overwhelming, it would be virtually impossible to debunk; the main strategy of denier blogs is therefore to focus on topics that are showy and in which it is therefore easy to generate public interest,” the authors wrote. [8]

“Proponents of creationism and intelligent design use the same strategy: Instead of providing scientific evidence in favor of their opinions, they instead focus selectively on certain lines of evidence for evolution and attempt to cast doubt on them.” [8]

Crockford responded by sending a letter to the editors of Bioscience “requesting retraction of the shoddy and malicious paper by Harvey et al.” [9]

GWPF “Peer Review” Process

While Crockford has claimed to have published “peer-reviewed” studies at GWPF, the group's unofficial peer review process differs from that of major academic journals. As revealed by an undercover Greenpeace investigation, articles would be submitted inside the GWPF's Advisory Council and other selected scientists reviewing the work, rather than presenting it to an academic journal. [10], [11], [12]

Sense About Science, a UK charitable trust, describes the danger of such a review process (despite having Matt Ridley, a member of GWPF's Advisory Council, on its own board):

”[S]ometimes organisations or individuals claim to have put their studies through peer review when, on inspection, they have only shown it to some colleagues. Such claims are usually made in the context of a campaign directed at the public or policy makers, as a way of trying to give scientific credibility to certain claims in the hope that a non-scientific audience will not know the difference.”

Stance on Climate Change

March 13, 2013

In a GWPF paper titled “Ten Good Reasons Not to Worry About Polar Bears,” Crockford makes assertions about polar bear populations and global warming. [13]

“Global temperatures have not risen in a statistically-significant way in the last 16 years […] which suggests that the record sea ice lows of the last few years are probably not primarily due to CO2 -caused increases in global temperatures,” Crockford wrote, citing a non-scientific GWPF paper and numbers provided by climate change denier Roy Spencer as evidence.

Key Quotes

March 2017

Beginning her speech at the Heartland Institute's Twelfth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC12), Crockford declared:[19]

“I am here today to give you an example of the failed science that is used to convince uninformed people that burning fossil fuels has had and will continue to have harmful effects on the planet.”

February 2015

Crockford was quoted by multiple news sources, including climate change denier James Delingpole at Breitbart, and climate change denial blogs Climate Depot and Bishop Hill, Principia Scientific International, Watts Up With That, for a paper she had written in 2015 for the Global Warming Policy Foundation titled “Twenty good reasons not to worry about polar bears”: [14], [15], [16], [17], [18]

“On almost every measure, things are looking good for polar bears,” Crockford claimed.

https://www.desmogblog.com/susan-crockford

Originally Posted by JetsetBkk

Attenborough’s tragedy porn of walruses plunging to their deaths because of climate change is contrived nonsense

A recent Netflix ‘Our Planet’ program with David Attenborough delivering a disturbing message of doom about walruses falling off a cliff to their deaths because of climate change is contrived nonsense on par with the bogus National Geographic starving polar bear video of 2017. The walruses shown in this Netflix film were almost certainly driven over the cliff by polar bears during a well-publicized incident in 2017, not because they were “confused by a combination of shrinking ice cover and their own poor eyesight“.


Falling off cliffs is not a new phenomenon. Here is video of US Fish and Wildlife officials in 1994 trying to explain a situation where walruses are falling even without the impetus from polar bears, at Cape Pierce in the southern Bering Sea (a haulout for adult males during the ice-free season). Explanation? Overcrowding (too many walruses).


https://polarbearscience.com/2019/04...ived-nonsense/










'Our Planet' film crew is still lying about walrus cliff deaths: here’s how we know


The lie being told by Attenborough and the film crew is that 200-300 walruses fell during the time they were filming, while in fact they filmed only a few: polar bears were responsible for the majority of the carcasses shown on the beach below the cliff.


https://polarbearscience.com/2019/04...s-how-we-know/

I can't believe people still fall for this oil-funded bullshit.

You fucking idiot.

^ Stupid people are not capable of recognizing they are stupid. It is call dunning kruger syndrome.

Originally Posted by bsnub

^ Stupid people are not capable of recognizing they are stupid. It is call dunning kruger syndrome.

So True!!
I just did a search on " dunning kruger syndrome " and it seems to confirm my attitude.
If "stupid is as stupid does" is true , and I think it is, then thinking back on my life, I could not had being the brightest light bulb on the christmas tree. IMO we are all stupid in our own way,I am sure even Einstein had his moments.
IMO intelligence is the ability to recognise one's stupidity , take appropriate steps to compensate for it , don't let the "Paralysis of analysis " debilitate , And most of all have a sense of humor about it all.

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

IMO intelligence is the ability to recognise one's stupidity

Exactly right.

Everyone needs to plant a tree a day to give the planet hope of survival..

Worth a watch. ..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertain...JUtpKq0LkJZ3DE